KMart needed extra funds, more money than their spectacular profits could provide back in the early 90's. They needed funds to offset the extremely high pension payments that retiring family owners were collecting. As profitable as it was KMart could not sustain payments to the owners that were collecting pensions. So you look for a profitable company to help pay costs that the family members pensions would not affect. Enter Sears.
While all of what you have said plays a factor, the problem started 25 years ago and it was not related to pricing, competition, or product quality.
Not to disparage you guys, but you are basically saying Sears should have b een able to predict the future. Everything would be better if we could all do that. Sears did not predict the future so they did not use their catal og business to become the major retail seller of the future. If that is th e logic you are using then we are all idiots because we did not invent Appl e before Jobs and Wozniak did in 1976. Why didn't you know computers and m obile phones and online was the future? Are you stupid? Who sitting here today knew that buying stuff from home using a computer was the future? Sh opping in stores was out?
Sears is not alone in failing to understand the current marketing needs. I was in a well known store that has announced the closing of a lot of stores. It is a huge mall store on multiple levels.
We tried to buy something and after wandering the hole floor actually found one person at a cash register who could make the sale. They don't understand that if there is no one to make the sale the sale will not happen.
On the other side of this I don't think that the electronic store will ever take over the world. It is just like the death of the Desktop. While the PC does not have the market share they once have there still is a demand for them.
The reason that that e shopping will never replace the store, is the reason that we were out shopping this morning. I bought a garment of clothing that was of a marked size. I have worn this size for decades. That garment did not fit. We had to go to the store and try on several different sizes to find the garment in a size that fits. You can not go down to the store and buy a pair of pants, with out trying them on.
When it comes to hardware, many times the specification for the item are incomplete or miss leading. They only way you can get what you want is to see it "in the flesh" look at the item turn it around to find if the item has what you want.
On this line I have seen some neat things on line. But when you actually get it, the dimensions have been miss represented and it is just two large/small for the purpose intended.
I recently mentioned I was looking to replace my Sony earphones. Amazon doubled the price from $14 to $27, plus shipping. I finally found them online at Walmart for $14 and free shipping. Walmart knows whats up, and if Amazon isn't careful, it will be in the bag with Sears/Kmart.
" snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Maybe you didn't read the other post? I specifically said they couldn't be faulted for not seeing the future - but that the result they got (as did many similar companies) is a predictable result of not seeing the future.
I recall buying a sandblaster at a relatively new Sears store about
25/30 years ago. I looked for a salesman to sell me the thing for over a half our. Finally I somehow found a manager bouncing around and raised hell with him, asked him how long he thought they would be in business if no one could find a salesman. Place closed about 3 years later.
Also, about 2 years ago I needed some shelf brackets. Sears had them for .79 cents apiece. I asked if they were mis-priced, as they should be about a nickel each. Found them on line, 25 for $1.49.
When you have fools running a business, competition will kill you eventually.
Keith Nuttle wrote in news:o4otob$15aa$1 @gioia.aioe.org:
Probably worth noting (since we're all dudes here) that this is something women have suffered with for years. No two makers of ladieswear use quite the same set of sizes - my girlfriend can be a 4, 6, or 8, a XS, S, or M, and never knows until she starts trying stuff on.
Leon wrote in news:Yf2dnYKXGdBRcvLFnZ2dnUU7- snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
Actually, it was directly attributable to those things. Back in the day, Sears was the best catalog store (so much so that the others, like Wards, are barely remembered). When they moved to direct retail, they weren't the best - in fact, they were pretty much indistinquishable from J C Penney, Macys, Dillards, or any of the other hundred similar stores that are no longer around. Being just like the other stores means they're getting the same result. To survive they would have somehow had to be better than the others, and they weren't.
Of course, having the albatros of K-Mart hanging around their neck hasn't helped.
My recollection from the newspapers of the day is that the Catalog was losing money, so after much agonizing, Sears closed its catalog, and laid 50,000 people off. I was stunned. The defense contractor I worked for at the time had 20,000 employees, and produced far more paper than Sears Catalog ever did. So, I can kinda guess what 20,000 of those Sears Catalog employees did, which left the other 30,000 unaccounted for. With that kind of overstaffing, no wonder they were losing money, with a bit of house cleaning, they could have made money.
In the 1970s, I bought thousands of dollars worth of hand tools for working on cars. Good stuff - still have and use it. The big debate of the day was if Snap-On was worth their premium over Craftsman. Most of my friends did what I did - Craftsman by default, Snap-On only if necessary. The last technical thing I bought from Sears was an ordinary hose for compressed air, probably 10 or 15 years ago. It was well made, but I could?t get the hose to attach securely to threaded compressed air connectors, like the Universal and IR and the like. It turned out that the hose was equipped with oxygen fittings. My guess was that Sears had laid off all the expensive grumpy old men who knew the difference, and who knew how to use every tool Sears sold, and the newly-hired bright-eyed young thing didn?t realize that air and oxygen are not quite the same thing.
I?d hazard that the self-defeating layoffs may have been a part of the closing of the Catalog division.
Returned the hose, bought a Goodyear air hose from Home Depot. This hose worked right from the box.
My guess that the Craftsman line will do better under Stanley/B&D, for all their sins. At least Stanley/B&D know what an air hose is for. I wonder how those bright-eyed young things will do under the new management.
Not everything purchased through Amazon is supplied or sold by Amazon. There are thousands of retailers selling their goods on Amazon and they ship direct from their stores, and they have all different prices and many are not even in the ball park of being competitively priced.
Not every store has a good location or a smart manager. One store does not reflect the sum of the stores. Remember Woolco? The Woolco store in Corpus Christi, TX would still be open today if it could have continued to operate. I worked there when I was going to school. It was not unusual at all for an ambulance to show up every weekend to haul some one away. The store was so crowded that people passed out, no kidding. Woolco was one of the first big stores to close.
You can always find a better deal but there is a price to pay for getting the product right now vs. tomorrow or later.
I was reading that ACE hardware and Aldi were a couple of brand stores that are doing well and growing. I went to ACE hardware a month ago to buy 8 magnetic cabinet door catches. 8 would have cost me $26. I drove
4 miles north and got the 8 catches at HD for $3.
True but there are many more factors the will sink you.
It's not just sears that is failing because of it. It is almost impossible to buy decent quality merchandise any more because every reseller is fighting for the bottom price - which also usually translates to the bottomof the barrel.
And those places thar DO have better quality stuff available don't have it "on the shelf" which means if you needed it yesterday or today you are TOTALLY screwed - and if you need it tomorrow? - Lots a luck!!. In many cases even the cheap crap is "special order only" or only available on-line.
On that basis, I maintain we are all "the poorer for it".
You don't have to agree - but that's MY view, from where I sit.
Today I just spent almost 3 hours locating a supplier for a particular compact flourescent replacement bulb - none available locally or within 5 days.
A few weeks ago I needed a 100 watt "compact flourescent" replacement bulb - (mogul base, integrated ballast) and by calling the manufacturer's agent, was able to get it tacked onto an open order from a wholesaler in the next city down the highway and got it in 10 days without paying double the price to have it shipped special (and we are not talking peanuts here - thebulb was $82 US wholesale, the shipping another $78 plus brokerage!!!!!!) Needless to say, I ordered
2 so I don't have to go through that again when the next one blows (there are 8? in the building.and they are all the same age - all on the same switch)
Sears was dying bit by bit before the K-Mart merger. It may be the merger is the only thing that kept it from dying right there. There was not a long line of suitors lined up to buy it, was there???
Up here in Ontario (and most of Canada) we still have Home Hardware and Canadian Tire partly filling PART of that role. Canadian tire used to be the place to go for low price and low quality. Today they are a little more upscale than WalMart
You could by a house, a car, a motorcycle, all your furniture, all your clothing, all your tools and hardware - virtually anything you needed "on line" (the phone line) back in the early years of Sears. They were WAY ahead of their time. They totally lost touch by racing all of their "competition" to the bottom.
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